


The Pain (It Spreads In Horror Ways)

by Jen425



Series: Greater Transgressions [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Brainwashing, But what else is new with this verse?, Evil Jedi Council, Mind Rape, Mutual brainwashing with someone forcing both, THIS IS HORRIFIC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 11:56:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16597427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jen425/pseuds/Jen425
Summary: Anakin is called in to help.Things change again.





	The Pain (It Spreads In Horror Ways)

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. Warning that this is horrifying. And that Plo and Ani are both NOT AT FAULT here

Anakin isn’t hesitant when the Council call him up. Of course not. He’s really little more than their puppet, now. And this isn’t the first time that he’s been called up. But that time had been right after they had worked more on his own “new learning”. That will be important,  _ very _ soon.   
  
It’s daylight, this time. Does that make it worse or better? But Shaak Ti has things to do, Obi-Wan Kenobi is on the front, and several others are gone, as well. There will be eight people in the Council Chambers before he enters, one of whom that will leave just as trapped as Anakin himself.   
  
He knows that he might be part of Master Plo Koon’s first session of new learning. Either to help or be his subject.   
  
But he will do whatever the Council requests of him.

 

Wait…why is he thinking like that? Something feels wrong…

 

No. Anakin knows what he has to do. Listen to the Council. Always. Like he’s always done.

 

(Why does this feel so wrong?)   
  
  
  


Plo stares. He… can’t believe it. The Citadel’s true usage, the “new learning”. Brainwashing, really. It feel like his whole world has been turned upside down.

 

The Citadel, he can believe. He remembers, a long time ago, pulled aside with the rest of his clan by a Padawan they hadn’t known well except that he had once been very close to Falling, disappeared for a few months, and came back reserved and focused and unbelievably tired.

 

The Padawan had pulled them to the side and warned them to hide their friendships. And the relationships that had just begun to blossom into more than that. To hide all the ways that they cared for others in a personal way or disagreed with the Council.

 

Or else be sent to the Citadel.

 

They’d listened, and they’d grown into better Jedi for it. But they’d all passed the story off as the Padawan messing with them.

 

But, as it turned out, he had been right.

 

“Surely, you cannot believe that this is right,” he says. “This is not the Jedi way.”

 

“But what must be done, this is,” he says. “And help us, you must.”

 

Plo just shakes his head.

 

“This is madness,” he says. “And I will have no part—”

 

Just then, the doors open.

 

On Anakin Skywalker.

 

And another thing becomes clear to Plo.

 

It’s been six months since Ahsoka left, and he would have to be blind not to have seen how much the Knight was struggling with Soka’s departure, but  _ this _ …

 

He remembers leaving for another campaign, a week and a half or so after. He hadn’t been able to make the next two Council meetings.

 

The next time he’d seen Skywalker, it had been a few weeks after that. He’d had short hair and tan robes and he’d seemed suddenly respectful. Plo had passed it off as Anakin having a realization.

 

Clearly, he had been wrong.

 

“Masters,” Skywalker says, respectfully. “I am here.”

 

Windu nods.

 

“Thank you, Knight Skywalker,” he says. Then, he turns to Plo. “We can sense our presence in him weakening. And we will need your help to reinstate it.”

 

Plo merely shakes his head, standing up in, admittedly, anger.

 

“No,” he says. “I will not be a part of this.”

 

Windu sighs.

 

“Then I’m afraid that you leave us no choice.”

 

As one, eight voices tell him to sleep.

 

And Jedi Master Plo Koon falls.

 

(We’re far past the place of irony.)

  
  
  


He helps. That will horrify him later. Anakin Skywalker helps without remorse, ripping through weak spots in Plo’s mind and blocking most of who Plo Koon is. His love for his troops and Ahsoka erased. His deep compassion and the wisdom it gives him because, somehow, the Council deem it too personal.

 

They erase that.

 

His morality. They warp that. He forgets the Padawan who warned him and dead sentients (proof, the Council calls it) of the truth of the Citadel and also why it bothered him. They replace it with decisions he never made.

 

A forgotten love? That is lost, too. Everything is, to the horrific destruction that he and the Council leave behind.

 

They make him forget his own protests, even.

 

This memory will break them both, later, and we are only half way through.

 

And it loosens the Council’s hold even more. He can almost remember… fear.

  
  
  


Plo Koon stands having forgotten why he fell. He had just been told of the Council’s new ingenious way of reteaching maverick Jedi. And he had been told to help with Skywalker.

 

Who kneels before him.

 

(Around them both, the others stand.)

 

“I’m ready,” Skywalker says, opening his shields, one by one. He’s trembling, Plo notices, the fear having fully escaped his mind blockers, now. Of course Skywalker wouldn’t understand without help.

 

And, without remorse, without his soul, Plo takes that, and remakes every one of the Council’s manipulations.

 

The Council goes back to their seats, and Anakin is sent on his way.

 

As if nothing had happened.

  
  
  


Anakin walks through the hallways, returning to his room. He has a night of meditation ahead of him. Like he should, as a Jedi.

 

Or so he thinks.

 

Because, on his way to his room, he instead falls to floor.

 

He isn’t found for five hours.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr @flaim-ita or on my ani5 side blog @ani5s


End file.
